Situation:

Bill from Gold Star Financial Management was on a roll following his firsttwo marketing automation projects, both of which were massive successes. Now Bill wants to kick things up a notch by adding an automation workflow to a process that didn’t necessarily require one. He wanted to offer additional value to those who interacted with his company’s sales assets and keep them engaged and moving along the sales funnel, while at the same time not saturating them with too much information and attention. Bill reflected on what he had learned from his recent experience and dove in head first developing a workflow in response to someone downloading a piece of gated content from Gold Star Financial’s website.

Here’s what he wants:

After the information required to bypass the gate is entered, send an email with a link to the desired content

If interest is shown, follow up with content of a similar nature to keep them engaged

Eventually tag the contact with the given product interest so they can dynamically receive similar content in the future

Attempt to broaden their knowledge of your offerings beyond their original interests

Keep them perpetually in the work flow until they either opt out or exit organically

Solution:

As soon as the user’s information required to access the gated content is authenticated, they are entered into the workflow and sent an email containing a link to download the document

Was it opened within 5 days?

No

Resend the document with a friendly note saying, “We noticed you didn’t see this email”, or something of a similar sentiment

Yes

Send an additional article on the topic they expressed interest in, keeping them engaged

Was it opened or clicked within 5 days?

No

Double down. Send a second article on that same topic in case they missed the first one

Yes

This contact has shown sufficient interest in the topic to warrant tagging them with said topic for future reference. They can now be opted into content distribution systems within which they will dynamically receive information on the topic in which they’re interested.

Proceed to send an overview of a product you offer related to the topic with other relevant resources they may be interested in (investment ideas, etc.)

Did they click anything within 5 days?

No

Send another article on the original topic

Keep them in the workflow and continue to send them information relevant to the topic, gently encouraging them to find out more about the related product you offer and your other various offerings

Clicked the investment idea or other resource

Send a product-oriented resource, encouraging them further down the sales funnel

Keep them in the workflow and continue to send them information relevant to the topic, gently encouraging them to find out more about the related product you offer and your other various offerings

Clicked the product link

Time to notify the sales team to step in and invite them to a company event or simply speak with them further

At this point the workflow has done its job so the recipient can successfully exit the workflow

It’s easy to see how creating a marketing automation workflow is as easy as laying out all of your goals as specifically as possible and working through how to address them with every step of the user’s journey. Drawing out and visualizing your user’s journey is extremely helpful when making your workflows as it provides a clear map and easy refence guide to plug in exactly where your workflow is addressing your initial goals.